In recent years, with the progress of the higher integration of semiconductor devices, circuit wiring is becoming finer, and an inter-wiring distance is becoming narrower. In manufacturing of a semiconductor device, many kinds of materials are repeatedly formed in a film shape on a silicon wafer, to form a layered structure. In order to form this layered structure, a technology to planarize a surface of the wafer is critical. As such a means of planarizing the surface of a wafer, a polishing device for performing a chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) (also referred to as a chemical-mechanical polishing device) have been used widely.
The chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) device is generally provided with a polishing table attached with a polishing pad, a top ring for holding a wafer, and a nozzle for supplying polishing liquid on the polishing pad. While the nozzle supplies the polishing liquid on the polishing pad, the top ring presses the wafer to the polishing pad, and the top ring and the polishing table are relatively moved, thereby to polish the wafer to planarize the surface of the wafer.
A substrate processing apparatus is an apparatus that has a function of cleaning and drying a polished wafer, in addition to such a CMP device. In such a substrate processing apparatus, improvement in a throughput of substrate processing is needed. Since a substrate processing apparatus has various processing parts for polishing or cleaning, delay in individual processing parts reduces overall throughput of the substrate processing apparatus. For example, a conventional substrate processing apparatus described in WO 2007/099976 A has not been able to simultaneously clean and dry a plurality of polished wafers, since only one cleaning line is provided in a cleaning part even when a polishing part has a plurality of polishing units.
Moreover, in the conventional substrate processing apparatus, when the polishing part has a first polishing unit and a second polishing unit, while a wafer has been directly carried into the first polishing unit from a loading/unloading part for polishing the wafer at the first polishing unit, a wafer has been carried into the second polishing unit via the first polishing unit from the loading/unloading part for polishing the substrate at the second polishing unit. Consequently, a same carry-in path portion of the first polishing unit and the second polishing unit has been congested, reducing a throughput.
Furthermore, in the conventional substrate processing apparatus, a transport robot disposed at the loading/unloading part has directly carried a wafer before polishing into the polishing part from the loading/unloading part, and has carried a cleaned wafer out from the cleaning part to the loading/unloading part. While high cleanliness is required for a hand of the transport robot that holds a cleaned wafer, there has been a concern that a wafer before polishing may be contaminated due to contact with a polishing environment when being directly carried into the polishing part.
It is desired to provide a substrate processing apparatus that can improve a throughput.
A substrate processing apparatus according to one embodiment is provided with:
a polishing part configured to polish a substrate;
a transporting part configured to transport a substrate before polishing to the polishing part; and
a cleaning part configured to clean a polished substrate.
The cleaning part has a first cleaning unit and a second cleaning unit that are vertically arranged in two stages;
the first cleaning unit and the second cleaning unit each have a plurality of cleaning modules that are arranged in series; and
the transporting part has a slide stage disposed between the first cleaning unit and the second cleaning unit, and configured to transport a substrate before polishing along an arrangement direction of the plurality of cleaning modules.
A substrate processing apparatus according to one embodiment is provided with:
a transporting part configured to transport a substrate before polishing to a polishing part; and
a cleaning part configured to clean a polished substrate.
The polishing part has
a first polishing unit and a second polishing unit; and
a polishing-part transport mechanism arranged adjacent to the transporting part and each of the first polishing unit and the second polishing unit.
The polishing-part transport mechanism has
a first transport unit configured to transport a substrate to the first polishing unit;
a second transport unit configured to transport a substrate to the second polishing unit; and
a transport robot disposed between the first transport unit and the second transport unit, and configured to transfer a substrate between the transporting part, and the first transport unit and the second transport unit.
A substrate processing apparatus according to one embodiment is provided with:
a polishing part configured to polish a substrate;
a transporting part configured to transport a substrate before polishing to the polishing part; and
a cleaning part configured to clean a polished substrate,
The polishing part has
N pieces (N is a natural number of 2 or more) of polishing devices;
a transport unit configured to transport a substrate to each of the N pieces of polishing devices; and
a transport robot configured to transfer a substrate between the transporting part and the transport unit.
The transport unit has
N pieces of pushers arranged at N locations of substrate-transport positions for the respective N pieces of polishing devices, and configured to vertically move; and
an exchanger having N pieces of stages vertically arranged in N stages, and configured to horizontally move independently from each other, between the N locations of substrate-transport positions and a standby position for transfer of a substrate with the transport robot.
A substrate processing apparatus according to one embodiment is provided with:
a polishing part configured to polish a substrate;
a transporting part configured to transport a substrate before polishing to the polishing part; and
a cleaning part configured to clean a polished substrate.
The cleaning part has
a plurality of cleaning modules arranged in series; and
a cleaning-part transport mechanism configured to transport a substrate between the cleaning modules each.
The cleaning-part transport mechanism has
a pair of arms that are openable/closable and configured to hold a substrate;
a vertical-moving mechanism configured to vertically move the pair of arms;
a rotating mechanism configured to rotate the pair of arms around a rotating shaft that is in parallel with an opening/closing direction; and
an arm-transport mechanism configured to linearly move the pair of arms along an arrangement direction of the plurality of the cleaning modules.